In recent years, various information processing apparatuses, such as a personal computer and a personal digital assistant (PDA), have been gaining in popularity. Most of such apparatuses have a wireless communication function. Wireless LAN is known as a representative wireless communication function. Wireless LAN is a wireless communication system which is stipulated by the IEEE 801.11 standard.
Wireless LAN has been widely used in recent years. Access points (base stations) of the wireless LAN are present not only in offices, but also in public wireless LAN service areas on the streets or in airports. Thus, users can perform Web browsing or transmit/receive e-mails at various places.
In the case of ordinary computers, in order to check whether an access point is present near the computer, the user needs to operate software for managing wireless connection after logging on to the computer. The user may try to find, for example, a public wireless LAN area (access point) on the street. In this case, the user first powers on the computer or restores the computer from a sleep state to a working state. Then, the user executes a logon operation (e.g. input of a user name, a password, etc.) and logs on to the computer. Thereafter, the user operates the above-described software. Viewing a list of access points, which is displayed by the software, the user determines whether there is an available access point.
However, if there is no access point near the present position of the computer, the user cannot connect to a wireless network by using the computer, despite the user having logged on to the computer.
In this case, after shutting down the computer or setting the computer in the sleep state, the user needs to carry the computer to another place and to perform the same operations at the place after the movement, that is, an operation of powering on the computer or restoring the computer from the sleep state to the working state, a logon operation and an operation of displaying the access point list.
In the meantime, there has recently been proposed a technique of displaying a detection result of an access point by means of, e.g. an LED, while the computer is in the power-off state.
However, in the state in which the computer is in the power-off state, the CPU and wireless communication device are powered off in usual cases, and all the services of the operating system are halted. Thus, in order to display a detection result of an access point while the computer is in the power-off state, it is necessary to prepare dedicated hardware. As a result, the system configuration may become complex, and an increase in cost of the system may be incurred.